A modern nativity - sand sculpture

A funny thing happens on Halloween night in the city of Dublin. When the clocks strike twelve the ghosts and ghouls are thrown down and replaced with lights and tinsel. There are less than two months to Christmas and the shops must get started selling the shit out of it.
If there is one holiday in year which personifies human gluttony and waste it is Christmas. Now I'm not going to go all Baa humbug on you, I like Christmas but, it has become a massive carbon footprint stamped into the earth. When I was growing up it was a much simpler affair, think Dickens Christmas. The religious message now plays second fiddle to the wheels of commerce.
What better than to have this more modern theme for a nativity.

Faked news

Another year another La Pineda nativity in Catalonia. We had several years earlier broken away from the traditional crib and each year we wanted to make it in a different style and maybe even get a message across to the people who came to view it.
The local Town hall, who were footing the bill loved the idea because it made their nativity special and the media always gave us great coverage and even a press conference in a local hotel to discuss what we were going to make. I have done many of these press conferences where we sat in front of Tv and photo cameras with questions coming from all sides and translated by interpreter. The unwritten rule is never to give anything away about what we would make and deflect every question to how great it was to be back creating another unique project for this wonderful town. Politicians would have been very impressed with how we dealt with the press. It is all very theatrical and a great start to their Christmas season.
We don't say what we are making mainly because usually we don't know until we all start our work the next day and also, it wouldn't be a surprise then, would it.

Polarize

When we do finish our sculpture their are those who love it, those who hate it, those who think we are being blasphemous and of course those who think that the town hall should not be wasting good money on this wacky art project. All of this creates great controversy which the media and the Major loves. Giving a whole other side to the Christmas story.
People are bused in from villages around to view our work and the town benefits by selling more shit. Everybody wins.

Cast of characters

So for this year we had the theme of A modern day Nativity. For me Christmas has become all consuming. I will do another post about how the others dealt with the subject but for me that is what I wanted to explore.. We each split off to do different characters from the crib and I was given one which I only know from the Catalan Nativity, The woodcutter. If you have seen any of my other nativities you will know that in Catalonia they have other characters as well as the central family and traditional well wishers. There is the Caganer, a guy taking a dump behind the stable and there is a washer woman (I don't know what she represents) The Caganer represents fertility of the soil and from my understanding the woodcutter was from a Germanic tradition. ???

What the?

For me the idea of a woodcutter was the beginning of the industriousness of Christmas So I gave him a more modern chainsaw chomping its way through the roots of a tree. The teeth on the chain are all consuming heads and scattered out around him are Christmas presents which are the product of his work.
I don't know if I am explaining this all to your satisfaction but it all made perfect sense to me while I was making it. I was really trying to express the overall drain on resources of the planet that Christmas has become in the modern era and believe it or not no drugs were used in the creation of this piece.

Attention span

It for sure got the public talking, not just my piece but the others which were shepherds cloning sheep, Mary, Joseph and Jesus in a bus shelter and televisions spitting out stars. Each piece had a bit of a negative side to it, I admit. I seems that as artists we all thought that Christmas has not changed for the better.

Losing my head

The reason my lumberjack has a very small head was a bit serendipitous. I had carved it full size but it fell off and left just a hand full of compacted sand. Rather than start from scratch I decided to carve a new one in what I had left. Funnily I liked the way it added something to the story and lightened the tone a bit. The small mindedness of the guy destroying the planet for profit. Ok I;ll say it, Baa Humbug but I still do love Christmas.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

Sid's adventure - ice sculpture

Ice Age 2 - ice sculpture

Vinaros - sand sculpture Documentary

I hope you'll join me again soon
@ammonite